Thalivar’s ghostly apparition, eyes rolling crazily, struck out at the nearest starspawn, but the ghost’s withering attack came to nothing. Theryn repeatedly punched the nearest paralyzed creature, rocking the stock-still starspawn with strike after strike. The crystal-and-flesh creature had been barely holding together as it stood rigid, and with a third punch, he blasted it apart into an expanding mass of crystal and meat. He then moved to intercept the starspawn gazer. “Hit me with a beam, will you?” Bob shouted at the gazer. “I would like to completely destroy you!” He cast fire bolt and blasted the creature, which staggered back as it burst into flames. Bob then looked around and took cover behind a cage. He winced as his cape brushed up against the cold and slimy ectoplasmic wall of the tower. The planar beacon strobed yet again, and there was a terrible wrenching noise as the paralyzed starspawn suddenly lurched to life, twisting open their cage doors with overlapping roars and screams as they at turns stumbled and glided towards the adventurers. One of the starspawn manglers stomped over to Varien and began to smash at him with its crystalline fists. Varien cast shield and warded off several of its resounding blows, each attack shattering the crystal claws which grew back horribly by pushing through the terminus of each meaty limb. Five blows were turned aside, but then the creature reared back with its sharp claw and thrust it with such power that it broke through the paladin’s defenses and lodged itself deep inside Varien’s shoulder. He was wracked by slashing and psychic damage from the creature’s attack. The misshapen starspawn screamer drifted through the air with howls from multitudinous mouths. Theryn pressed his hands to his ears to ward off the worst of the aural assault. In unison, all of the creature’s mouths opened and expelled the air that they had accumulated by gliding through the fog. In 24-part harmony, the creature let loose a piercing cry that blasted the adventurers. Siegfried and Varien both shuddered under the attack and lost concentration. Somewhere in the tower’s lower level, there was a sudden explosion of blood and gore as Gallio Elibro’s dismembered remains and vital fluids were transported back to the Ethereal Plane, painting the grey walls of the tower with splashes of arterial red. “The wizard is back,” Varien called to Siegfried. From his hiding spot, Bob was stricken with a seizure as the ringing sound of the creature’s scream rolled over him. His ears began to bleed, and the sorcerer blacked out and slumped to the floor unconscious. “Your singing is bad and you should feel bad!” Siegfried shouted at the screamer. The gazer, standing next to Theryn, landed a slam attack that battered the monk. Suddenly, a telepathic voice rang out inside Theryn, Varien, and Siegfried’s heads. YOU LIT THE BEACON. WE HAVE COME. “I don’t like the sound of that,” Varien muttered. From out of the mists surrounding the tower emerged a ball of otherworldly energy that homed in on Siegfried. A psychic barrage blasted the half-orc, and a concussive blast caught both Siegfried and Varien. Siegfried was knocked prone while Varien grit his teeth and stood his ground. The ghost of Thalivar was also caught up in the concussive wave, and was spun about in a blur by the attack, his insane screams joining the howls of the screamer. “Did that come from outside the tower?” Varien asked. From his position on the ground, Siegfried weakly pointed at an approaching shadow that emerged from the mists. It looked like a large alien jellyfish, a floating bag of gas from which descended dozens of twitching, dangling tentacles. The creature’s eyes were locked on the adventurers and it was giving them a telepathic impression of ancient hunger. WE ARE COMING. Siegfried rolled over and looked at Varien. “If you’ve got that thing, then I can make it lose us. Banish it, and I can ensure it never finds us again.” Varien turned to face the approaching creature, wielding Fiendsbane with divine confidence. His eyes and armour began to glow a golden glow. “I won’t need to banish it if it’s dead!” he said as he cast haste on himself. He bolted towards the approaching aberration, ducking away from a nearby creature’s clumsy swipe. “Fiendsbane, don’t fail me now!” Varien said to his sword. Have I ever? The sword replied. Varien leaped out the window towards the hulking starspawn, rushing across the foggy distance to strike with mighty fervour. His radiant smite blasted the creature. He slashed through tentacles and penetrated the fleshy expanse before him with two more strikes. PATHETIC , the creature said telepathically. Erwen and Alec crowd-surfed atop a carpet of giant badgers as they were conveyed towards Leilon proper. They found themselves moving towards a quaint-looking establishment that bore the sign Aubrey’s Peculiarities Shoppe hanging out front. “This must be the place,” Erwen said as he picked a giant badger and leapt onto it, giving it an order to bash through the shop’s door. He and the badger barged right on in, ripping the brass shopkeeper’s bell from its moorings before it even had a chance to chime at their entry. The shop was crammed with curiosities likely dredged from the ruins of Leilon: old fishing rods of uncertain provenance, swamp idols of even more uncertain origin, rusted mining helmets, and other oddities. Hanging behind the counter was a painted tryptic showing a fantastical depiction of three adventurers: a dark-skinned warrior woman, a red-bearded dwarf with a lute, and a third adventurer whose features had become vague as the painting faded with age. A whimsical middle-aged man, thin and tall with a shock of lustrous white hair adorning his head, was busy arranging small stone chits atop the counter he stood behind. The badger pulled up short as the shopkeeper’s eyes widened. Without missing a beat, the man’s expression broke into one of joy as he snapped his fingers. “A Halfling, riding a badger? Of course! Of course! BINGO!” He picked up a scroll of parchment and produced a feathered quill, marking something off on the page before turning his attention back to Erwen. “Well met, my small-statured friend. I am Aubrey Silverspun, and thank you for gracing my peculiarities shop with your presence. How may I help you?” He said, bowing with a flourish. “Aubrey, love the energy, and I’m looking for a tuning fork!” He held up a tree-branch that was shaped like a fork. A knowing look crossed the shopkeeper’s face as he leaned over the counter to regard the Halfing. “Are you sure you’re not looking for a proper dowsing rod, my friend?” “Maybe later, but this is pretty urgent. This has to do with the tower down the road, and I have to help my friends.” “Well then, oh my!” Aubrey began to fiddled with a many-drawered cabinet behind him, pulling out drawers and random and sifting through them, muttering to himself. “Yes…yes…for the right price of course…let’s see here.” Is there a particular key of tuning fork that you would like?” He pulled out a knurled pitch-pipe and blew a series of notes before throwing it into a pocket on his vest. “I’m sure I saw something in here.” “To be honest, I don’t know how they work, but my friend might! Alec! Come here!” Alec strolled into the shop. “What do you need, Erwen?” “Frequency is everything,” Aubrey continued, still searching. “Alec, do you know where our friends went?” Erwen asked. Alec scratched his bare chest. “Well, there was talk of the Ethereal Plane, I think,” he said. “The Ethereal Plane?” Aubrey piped up. “Of course! That’s in the key of B, I believe.” “I don’t know what kind of hocus pocus you need to do, but there’s more to you than meets the eye, clearly, and I know you can produce the tuning fork we need!” Erwen said to Aubrey. “Oh, but you do flatter me, sir!” Aubrey said with a twinkle in his eye. Wagging a finger at the Halfling, he said “don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing! But for the badger’s sake, flattery will get you everywhere, in fact!” “It is your lucky day, my lucky little man,” Aubrey said with a smile. “As far as I have learned in my years studying oddities, you will require a tuning fork of glass in order to slip between the Prime Material and the Border Ethereal. And it just so happens that I have one!” With a flourish, Aubrey presented a small glass tuning fork. “Now,” he said conspiratorially, “I do believe this one’s previous owner thought it to be a thermometer, and it took quite a lot of butter and oil to fish it back out of him. If I were you, I would wash my hands after each use of this object. So. One glass tuning fork in stock, so do you have the requisite gold with which to purchase said item?” “What do you want for it?” Erwen said uneasily. Counting coins had never been his strong suit. “Well,” Aubrey said thoughtfully. “I could let it go for, say, a thousand.” “Do you want this tower in the centre of town?” Erwen asked. “The tower?” Aubrey asked. “The evil tower?” Erwen said. “Well, nobody wants the tower,” Aubrey spluttered uncomfortably. “Tell you what, you let me borrow this and if in the next 24 hours that tower isn’t taken care of, then you can keep the money.” As Erwen said this, Aubrey’s attention was drawn over the Halfling’s shoulder out the front windows of his shop, where in the middle distance the Tower of Thalivar was swaying and shuddering atop the hill where it stood. Aubrey smiled patiently. “Little man, I have truly enjoyed our conversation today. I’ll tell you what – 500 gold and it’s yours forever.” “Great!” Erwen said. “I’ll give you 600!” He threw a pouch of coins onto the countertop, scattering the stone pieces. Aubrey quickly placed the tuning fork in a fine oaken coffer lined with velvet pillowing. The hinged boxtop was engraved with a striking carving of Aubrey’s smiling, bearded visage. “Only the most peculiar from Aubrey’s Peculiarities Shoppe!” he said with a childish giggle. The pouch of gold disappeared. Erwen grabbed Alec’s hand and the claws of six of his giant badgers and rang the tuning fork. “Bring me to my friends in the Ethereal Plane!” he said over the ringing glassy sound of the tuning fork as he cast plane shift. “By the power of friendship!” Aubrey called out, clapping his hands. The ringing sound grew to a crescendo and suddenly Erwen, Alec, and the six badgers winked out of existence. Aubrey stood alone in his shop for a moment. “What a pleasant fellow,” he said aloud, noticing the noses of Erwen’s remaining badger brigade pushing up against the leaded glass of his shop window. “Badgers,” he chuckled, picking up his document and making another notation. Back in the ethereal tower, there was a chiming sound as Erwen, Alec, and six giant badgers popped into existence. Siegfried nodded at the new arrivals and cast healing spirit , conjuring the Thann battle standard near Bob’s unconscious form. Bathed in the healing energy of the spirit, Bob’s eyes fluttered open. The sorcerer sat up and was immediately dizzy. All he could hear was a constant ringing in his ears. Siegfried moved next to Alec and said, “All right! Like we discussed!” He took his ethereal elfbane cutlass and stabbed it into the crystal cylinder, cracking it. The beacon continued to strobe and pulsate. Siegfried cast booming blade and blasted it with a thunderous wave in an attempt to synchronize the beacon’s resonance frequency with that of his intra-planar sword. Then he grabbed Alec’s hand, placed it on the hilt of his sword, and invited the barbarian to cast shatter. “With pleasure,” Alec said, casting the spell. A painfully intense ringing noise built up inside the crystal cylinder, causing the planar beacon’s pulsations to regulate into a new frequency. The the crystal cracked into a million pieces, and Alec and Siegfried could feel the play of invisible radiation wash over him. The beacon’s light began to visibly wane. The shatter spell blasted two of the nearest starspawn, and the crystals studding their bodies began to burst and break apart. The creatures roared in agony, muttering in Deep Speech. In Siegfried’s head he heard the floating aberration moan NOOOOOOOOOO. “I refuse to die for your freaking night light!” Siegfried shouted at the creature. Alec surged with new reserves of energy and cast another shatter . The large geode began to crack and break apart under the onslaught of Alec’s spell. The starspawn mangler caught up in the blast exploded into a pile of crystal-studded meat. The beacon itself was pulverized, winking out of existence with a final flash of white as it became nothing more than a pile of crystalline gravel. “Great job, Alec!” Siegfried shouted. “You’ve saved the-” Suddenly, with a faint popping sound, Siegfried disappeared. In the Material Plane, Siegfried reappeared on the precariously tilting top level of the tower ruin. “-day!” he finished his sentence and then looked around, confused. “Ah,” he said. “Right.” There was a brilliant flash as the dead white light glowing in the voided section of the tower winked out of existence. Siegfried smiled even as a ripple of psychic energy rippled through him. He looked down at the tower’s shadow and confirmed that the ethereal tower was still in existence. Then he turned and shouted “ready the archers!” A fair distance away, Grizzelda and Shadra looked at one another. “Archers?” they repeated. Back in the Ethereal Plane, with the sudden destruction of the planar beacon, the remaining cages sprang open, their bars visibly corroding and weakening. Alec pushed over what remained of the crystal cylinder, and began to take on draconic aspects, growing a scaly tail. “Let’s wrassle!” he said to the giant floating aberration, his hands growing into claws. Theryn began to kick at the nearest starspawn gazer, missing at first but connecting with the second. With a flurry of blows he bashed the creature senseless with a stunning strike. Then he hit the frozen creature with a mighty kick and pushed it down five feet through the ectoplasmic floor. Bob realized he had been deafened by the screams of the star spawn. His ears felt like they had been stuffed with cotton. Struggling to his feet, he cast lesser restoration and restored his hearing. Then he quickened a firebolt and blasted the incoming star spawn comet. The starspawn screamer glided again, causing a screaming wind to blast Theryn and Varien. The creature clawed at Varien, who cast shield and blocked the incoming attack. The starspawn comet unleashed another psychic barrage, which missed. YOU WILL PAY it said telepathically. WE KNOW WHERE YOU ARE. YOU CANNOT HIDE. Varien gripped Fiendsbane’s hilt and said, “I am everywhere the light touches. You are in your final day!” Alec grabbed a handful of tentacle. “Yeah, we know where you are too!” Varien began to slash violently at the starspawn comet, releasing radiant strikes one after another, until the creature began to fall apart before him. Leaking air and fluid, the struggling aberration gave one last telepathic gasp. WE…WILL…FIND…YOU The comet came apart in a flood of gore and gas. “You’ll probably need a beacon for that,” Alec said, dropping a handful of dissected tentacles onto the floor. Erwen directed his badgers against the starspawn screamer, piling on from all angles. They chewed into the aberration, tearing hunks of eyeballs and mouth out with each rake of the claw and bite of the teeth. Erwen moved in and activated his primal savagery , tearing into the creature with acidic biting attacks. The tower was beginning to come apart around Siegfried, who maintained his footing even as great hunks of stone began to break off and crash to the earth below. The rickety winch and crane at the top of the tower ripped from its moorings and crashed through the wooden scaffolding on its way down the side of the tower. Siegfried shrugged and jammed the ethereal venomizer nozzle back up his nose and took a hit from it, sending him back into the ethereal plane. Reappearing in the ethereal tower, Siegfried looked at the space where the starspawn comet had been. “Where did the ugly one go?” he called out. He quickened an eldritch blast against the stomped gazer. Three bolts of shadowy energy struck the struggling creature. Alec ran up to the starspawn screamer and hit it with a critical strike as a great weapon master. His second hit cut deeper, followed by a third and a fourth slash, cutting the creature to ribbons. As it fell apart in front of Alec, Siegfried smiled. “It appears I wasn’t needed.” “YOU!” shrieked the ghost of Thalivar, who had recovered his senses after being blasted by the starspawn comet. “You destroyed the planar beacon! My life’s work, ruined! My life’s work!” He clawed at Siegfried in a fit of insanity. Siegfried callously blocked the ghost’s withering touch with his shield. “All men have their day of labour,” he told the ghost. “Your time to rest came and went long ago. Be at peace.” Theryn unlimbered his stormbow and put two arrows into the starspawn gazer, and followed up with a kick to its prominent proboscis, breaking its nose and blackening its orb-like eye. Bob raised his hands and twinned a guiding bolt , sending one into Thalivar and the other into the remaining starspawn. Thalivar’s ghost stiffened as the bolt struck home, and let out a frantic scream as he was obliterated from reality. Bob’s second bolt whizzed just past the gazer. The gazer locked its large eye on Bob, who felt himself entranced by the creature. He couldn’t look away. Bob felt a piercing pain in his forebrain as psychic damage struck him. The gazer began to pull itself out of its ectoplasmic prison and attacked the nearest giant badger, bludgeoning it. With another swipe, he blasted the conjured creature into a scattering of fey magic. Then, the gazer fired a beam of psychic energy in a ten-foot-wide beam that lashed over them. Three more of Erwen’s giant badgers withered and disappeared under the assault. “More like Sadgers,” Erwn mused, looking at his two remaining badgers. Varien brought Fiendsbane down on the starspawn gazer, cutting its head from its shoulders. Bob snapped out of his reverie. With the creatures all dead, the group’s attention turned to their surroundings. Save for the ringing echo of Thalivar’s ghost’s scream, the only other thing to note was that the walls were beginning to melt quickly. Varien spied an ethereal spire that was attached to the main level of the tower. He dashed quickly up the astral spire. It appeared ghostly and immaterial like the rest of the tower, but was bathed in a bloodred glow. The spiral staircase led to a small circular chamber. Varien saw that the source of the reddish light was a crystal the size of a human palm, suspended in the stone jaws of a snake statue that rose up from a decorative pedestal in the centre of the room. The jewel and its pedestal were both bathed in an aura of magical energy. “What manner of rock is this?” Varien said. On the stone there was a rune that Varien didn’t recognize, although the entire setup reminded him of the treasures he and his friends had discovered in the depths of Old Owl Well. “Hmmm,” the paladin said. Varien reached out to snatch the rock from the snake statue’s jaws. The protective enchantment washed over him, but he was able to withstand the magical backlash, holding steady as he pulled the stone out of the maw of the snake statue. There was a crackle of lightning that played over his plate armour. He gripped the stone and rode out the blowback, overpowering the magic with the strength of his divine well. Around him, the tower began to slip, slide and melt. “Get clear of this tower!” Varien called, pushing his way through the ectoplasmic slime of the astral spire even as the tower melted away. He looked down at his gauntlet. The stone glowed a dark, ruby red. It began to whisper promises to the paladin. Below Varien, his friends also got out of the tower as it liquified around them. Only one of the badgers faltered as the ethereal tower came down. It remained in mid-air, its fur slicked down by ectoplasm. Outside, in the Prime Material Plane, Erwen’s badger brigade had done a masterful job in undermining the tower, which collapsed in on itself in a textbook-perfect demolition that left no stone unturned. Grizzelda nodded in appreciation of the professional work. Lance-Captain Shadra let out a breath she’d been holding. “Well,” she said. “I do hope those men got out of there in time.”